1450–1750
Major Developments
- Questions of periodization
- Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period
- Changes in trade, technology, and global interactions
- Knowledge of major empires and other political units and social systems
- Aztec, Inca, Ottoman, China, Portugal, Spain, Russia, France, Britian, Tokugawa, Mughal
- Characteristics of African kingdoms in general but knowing one as illustrative ( Kongo, Benin, Oyo, Dahomey, Ashanti, or Songhay
- Gender and empire (including the role of women in households and in politics)
- Slave systems and slave trade
- Demographic and environmental changes: diseases, animals, new crops, and comparative population trends
- Cultural and intellectual developments
- Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
- Comparative global causes and impacts of cultural change
- Major developments and exchanges in the arts (Mughal, the Americas)
- Creation of new religions (Vodun, Zen, Sikhism, Protestantism)
- Diverse interpretations
- What are the debates about the timing and extent of European predominance in the world economy?
- How does the world economic system of this period compare with the world economic network of the previous period?
Major Comparisons and Snapshots
- Compare colonial administrations
- Imperial systems: European monarchy compared with a land-based Asian empire
- Coercive labor systems: slavery and other coercive labor systems in the Americas
- Analyze the development of empire (i.e. general empire building in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas
- Analyze the development of imperial systems: a European seaborne empire compared with a land-based Asian empire.
- Compare Russia's interaction with the West with the interaction of one of the following (Ottoman Empire, China, Tokugawa Japan, Mughal India) with the West
- Compare Mesoamerican and Andean systems of economic exchange
Examples of What You Need to Know
Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.
- Extent of Ottoman expansion, but not individual states
- Slave plantation systems, but not Jamaica's specific plantation system
- Institution of the harem, but not the Hurrem Sultan
- Relations between the Kongo and Portugal, but not individual rules
- Tokugawa Japan's foreign policy but not Hideyoshi
- Importance of European exploration, but not individual explorers
- Characteristics of European absolutism, but not specific rulers
- Protestant Reformation, but not Anabaptism or Hugeunots
